Make It in Ink
by aaaaaaaaaa-sa-a
Summary: In which Annabeth has something crafty up her sleeve, and Percy might be a little bit fascinated. Punk!Annabeth. Artsy!Percy. AU. Rated for kissing. One-shot.


**AN: So, I was looking for something to read on here, and I realized that there was a lot of Punk!Percy and not a lot of Punk!Annabeth.**

**Thus, this was born.**

**(P.S.: Percy and Annabeth are around sixteen/seventeen in this fic.)**

Annabeth has tattoos.

Like, all over her body. Not just on her arm.

Percy discovers this fact on one study date.

His parents leave him and his girlfriend alone, under the pretext that he and Annabeth would be studying. (They were going away for the weekend.) They are _also_ under the pretext that Annabeth is his tutor–which she is. But she's also his girlfriend.

They don't need to know about the second part, yet. Even though he always tells his mom everything, he'd like to keep Annabeth to himself.

He's also not sure if they, especially his stepdad Paul, would approve of Annabeth, with her ripped leather and her Skrillex haircut and her face piercings. Paul's talked before about how "Annabeth Chase is the perfect student" except for the way "she dresses like a hooligan" because it's "a bad influence on the other, younger students."

Even that doesn't stop Percy and Annabeth from coaxing them out of the apartment, promising everything's going to be fine, they don't need to worry.

Once the door shuts behind them and the car pulls away, Percy starts for the couch, asking about what they're going to do first.

Until Annabeth turns him around via a hand twisted in the front of his shirt and she kisses him.

_Hard_. Like, really, really, hard.

Her right hand–the one with the _Titan's Curse_ tattoo on the wrist–drags through his hair, and he instantly melts into her. He closes his eyes, pressing one palm to her hip and runs the other over the shaved part of her head. He likes the feel of the soft hairs brushing against his fingers.

His shirt is suddenly off and she's got him on the couch without his notice.

"Wa-wait," he pants, pulling away. "What a-about studying?"

"Forget about it," she whispers into his ear before biting down slightly on it and rolling her hips against his and–yeah. It's forgotten about.

Tugging her almost forcefully, he slants his mouth over hers', and she sucks on his upper lip. Her lip ring is cold, and it sends a delicious shiver up his spine. His hand gets bolder, sliding over her stomach until his fingers brush against the wire of her bra.

She gasps, and pulls back to tug her shirt over her head, throwing it somewhere across the room. Annabeth leans down to kiss him again, but he presses his hand against a patch of black on her right side.

"You-you have tattoos," he breaths.

Her eyes roll in response. "I do."

"I just–" He props himself on his elbows, his eyes and fingers never leaving the incredibly detailed flame pattern wrapping around her lower right side. He takes a deep breath because–because it's just amazing, and he looks up at her face. "Can I see–look at them?"

She nods, and he sits up, shifting her from his hips to his lap.

After her moving slightly to give him a better angle, Percy traces a hand over the extremely detailed flames. They reach up to her bottom rib and wrap around her right side. The flames–each little detail, each little curl of fire–is so incredibly thorough that it takes his breath away.

His hands itch to recreate it. He wants to recreate it. Needs to.

Just as he's about to reach for his sketch book, he notices the tattoo on her collar bone. It's an owl (her favorite animal, he knows), its' wings spread and in flight. An in-depth moon is inked onto her skin just above it. Swiping his thumb against it, he earns a groan from Annabeth.

Before he can get any farther, he leans over, searching for any more tattoos, and, _yep_, there's more. On her left side, set up like the flames on her right, is a beautiful array of thorny roses. He digs his fingers into her side, and a rumble sounds from deep in her throat.

On her back is a display of hundreds of feathers, all coming together to form two beautiful, extravagant wings. They reach her shoulders, but only to the point where they're sneakily concealed beneath the sleeves of her T-shirts.

"I mean–I just–They're beautiful," he breaths, gliding his hand down the length of her left wing. She groans, leaning back towards him to gain more pressure from his hand, and he's suddenly very panicky that he might be paying too much attention to _her_ _tattoos_ than _her_.

"I sorry!" he squeaks, pulling away. He's still a new boyfriend, and Annabeth is kinda intimidating. "I haven't been paying attention to you and maybe you're not ready for me to be touching you like this and–"

"Percy," she murmurs, and he shuts up. If she's going to say his name _like that_, he's going to shut up.

"It's okay. Art is your thing," she continues. "Anyway," she gives him a wicked grin that makes his mouth go dry, "I think it's cute when you obsess over art."

"Then I'll try to obsess over it more," he concludes, and she snorts, and he realizes that may have come out wrong. He shrugs. Eh.

He blindly fumbles for his camera, his eyes never leaving the wings on her back. Once he finally finds it, he waves it in one hand, the strap hitting his thumb. "Can I…?" She raises her eyebrows at him, and he swallows. "Can I…take pictures?"

She snickers. "Sure. You can take pictures of your topless girlfriend. That isn't creepy at all."

He scrunches up his nose. "You know that isn't what I mean."

"Yes, Seaweed Brain, you can take pictures of me _topless_, _on your couch_–"

"Of your tattoos!" Percy exclaims, cutting her off. His face burns. He isn't sure he can take anymore of her teasing without, like, _exploding_, or something.

Chuckling, she spreads her arms for him, giving him full view of her wings and partial view of her flames and roses. He brings his camera up to his eyes and takes a picture. Then, circles around, snapping shots of her flames, roses, and her owl and moon.

He gazes at the shots he took, dragging his thumb over the screen. "Who…who did these?" he asks, kind of breathless.

"You know Will Solace?" she says.

"Nico's boyfriend?" His hands tighten around his camera, gritting his teeth, thinking of another boy except for him touching Annabeth like this.

She snickers at him again. "Don't need to get jealous, Seaweed Brain. Solace's _sister_ Tory did them."

He relaxes. "Good. That's good." And then his face burns again. "I'm not jealous!"

"Says your red face _and_ your squeaky voice," she says cockily. He scowls at her, and then she kisses him, and then he stops scowling.

"Percy," she whispers, her breath fanning out across his jaw. "Are we gonna get back to what we were doing before…?"

He licks his lips and kisses her, giving her his answer.

;

Annabeth leaves after they get done with some actual studying.

Percy immediately gets out his art book and sketches out her tattoos.

And then he starts sketching out tattoo designs of his own–dragons, waves, flames, and some other random designs. He wonders if Annabeth will like them.

He plays hermit for the rest of the weekend, only coming out of his room for food and bathroom breaks, constantly improving his designs. He wants them to be as good as the ones already inked onto his girlfriend's skin.

By the time his parents come home, he decides that he's going to bring his sketch book to school and show Annabeth.

;

He's nervous.

He's _extremely_ nervous.

Constantly fixing his glasses and picking at his sweater vest, he waits for Annabeth. For a long while. She isn't late; Percy just gets a ride from Paul every morning, and Paul has to be early.

He flips through his book again. _What if they're not good enough? What if she doesn't like them? _

But he tries to quell those thoughts. He already went to his cousin Nico–who's a punk, like Annabeth, and likes a lot of the same stuff she does–to see if they would work, and Nico had told him that he'd get one of Percy's tattoos. If he still had an inch of skin that wasn't already covered in black ink, of course. He also went to his other cousin Thalia (who's also a punk, too, of course. She's actually the reason Percy and Annabeth met), and she said the exact same thing.

The only-slightly-early kids spill through the doors, and Percy searches the crowd for a dot of black. And then he spots her, with her _Panic! At The Disco _T-shirt and her ripped jeans and her silver chains. His heart swells, and he feels like smiling goofily when she smirks at him and makes her way over.

She studies him carefully, tugging on the single strap of her backpack thrown over her shoulder. "Why are you looking at me like that?" she questions.

He snaps out of the trance he had no idea he fell into. "I, um…" He holds out his art book. "I-I want to show you something."

"O-K…" she drawls, quirking a pierced eyebrow at him. He's acting weird, he knows, and she's picking up on it.

Opening up his book, he flips through the pages until he gets to the page he wants to show her. She leans over his shoulder and gasps. Almost tenderly, she takes the book out of his hands and into her own, turning the page.

She presses her forefinger onto the wave design, and she announces, "That one."

"That one…what?" he asks, genuinely confused.

"I want it," she tells him, and his mouth goes dry.

"Wh-what?"

She gives him a look. "I said, _I want it_. Are you slow today? Well, slow_er_."

Brushing off her comment, he says, "S-so they're alright?"

"Percy." She locks their gazes. "They're really, really good. Great, actually. If they weren't, why would I ask for this one? Unless you didn't want me to like them…"

"N-no!" he exclaims. "I, uh, I made them…" He scratches the back of his neck. "I made them to impress you."

She smiles at him–a real smile, one that shows off her dimples and her perfect teeth, not just a cocky smirk. "You don't need to 'impress me' or anything, Percy," she says. She takes his hand. "You just need to…_be there_. For me."

Percy gets the deeper meaning. Her mom had died when she was very young, but old enough to remember her, and, after that her mom's death, her father pushed her away, completely shutting her out. The result was punk Annabeth, who got both straight A's and piercings, and rebelled against her father's wishes.

Even though her beginning was sad, Percy doesn't want her to change for anything. He loves her; flaws and all.

"I love you," he murmurs.

"I love you, too." She pats his chest. "I still want the tattoo."

"Where would I put it?" he inquires.

"Hmmm…" She contemplates for a moment before holding up her left arm; the arm devoid of tattoos. "Here," she says, dragging her finger down her elbow joint, stopping to tap her wrist.

His eyes widen. "Your entire forearm?"

Nodding, she says, "Yeah."

He grins. "I can do that."

;

Annabeth manages to borrow Tory's–her usual tattoo artist–tattoo machine.

She sets it up in her house so that Percy can use it without detection, since her dad, stepmother, and twin half-brothers are out.

After Percy figures it out, he gets to work. When the tip presses against the soft skin of her elbow, she hisses in pain, and he almost pulls away, but she tells him to keep going.

And so he does. He maps out the flowy way of the waves, letting the tool glide over her skin like he's sketching. She hisses and grunts every so often, but otherwise stays still.

Once he gets the vague shape of the design, he goes back to do the details; the curl of white water, the ripples in the waves. The dark blue ink slowly covers her forearm.

Red appears next to the lines, and Percy panics for a moment before Annabeth tells him that it's normal, and that they just need to wrap it up for a bit. She pulls out gauze and allows him to tenderly cover her arm.

When he's done, he takes her hand and kisses it. She smiles at him.

"Thanks, Percy," she says, bring her arm up to examine it. "This might be the best tattoo yet."

;

It takes some time for her to heal and the gauze to come off, but when it does, it's worth it. It's probably his favorite piece of his work.

(Though that decision might be a _little bit_ influenced by who the canvas is.)

Whenever Percy sees it, affection races through his body, sending electricity to the very tips of his nerve endings. It's because he knows that that's _his_ mark on her. _He_ did that. _He_ marked _her_. And it gets him excited every time he sees her ink-covered arm.

Annabeth knows this, probably, considering the fact that she waves at his with her left hand now, or always insists on holding his right hand, even though it was the opposite before.

He loves her tattoo so much that it gets one of his own. But, instead of waves, it's twining olive branches.

;

Later in life, Percy might have a part-time job in the tattoo business, and his wife might be his number one costumer. Her name might also start with an A.

When they have children, those kids might like to doodle, and their favorite places to doodle might be on the skin of themselves and their parents. They might even claim that these doodles are _tattoos, _and they might add _just like the ones Mommy and Daddy have._

**AN: I wonder how many people will get the reference I buried deep within here… *Cackles***

**I have no idea how long it takes for a tattoo to heal, since I've never gotten one myself (unless that Spider-Man slap-on one I got at my friends' birthday party all those years ago counts), so if the timeline is vague, that's the reason.**

**This was not beta'd, so all mistakes are mine.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson or any other kind of product I might have mentioned.**

**Constructive criticism appreciated, and reviews really do mean a lot to me!**


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